Agreed. It just isnt worth the additional money and the GT3 is so close to a perfect car as it is. I would have put the DBS much higher and would say the R8 should have won it.Originally Posted by The_Canuck
Member
Agreed. It just isnt worth the additional money and the GT3 is so close to a perfect car as it is. I would have put the DBS much higher and would say the R8 should have won it.
Furniture
None the less, there were criteria for these marks I assume. What were they and how were they weighted?
Super Moderator
I'm a bit surprised about the winner, but I mostly agree with the list anyway.
Side notes:
a) Quoting white text makes it readable and defeats the purpose of using white text in the first place...
b) 2,000th post.
Reginald *IB4R* says:
it was a beautiful 35 seconds.
David says:
that's what she said
'64
Have you driven it?
Enthusiast
I'd put the R8 in first, a great drivers car and with so many great reviews, a daily driver contrary to the RS and schuderia.
"Religious belief is the “path of least resistance”, says Boyer, while disbelief requires effort."
'64
Evo are not applying a different criteria though.
It is not about which is fastest or most practical, or best combination of both, but which is the best to drive.
The R8 might be very good, but is it really better than the GT3 RS?
They don't explicitly say on what basis points are awarded, but each contributor gives a mark out of 100 and the score is averaged.
I don't think the results are determined by the scores, rather the scores are determined by the results - more of a formality than a key part of the process - although it gives a representation of how closely they rated each car to the others.
Again it comes back to subjective opinion - you can give a simple ranking to, say, a list of acceleration times, but it is not so easy to rate more abstract concepts such as "handling" or "feel" against each other, and it is not easy to break everything down into discreet categories.
You can tell instinctively whether something is good or not, and whether something is better than something else - trying to give an exact reason and then assigning that reason a number is probably thinking about it too much, largely irrelevant, and ultimately not very informative.
So the Civic scores 89.4 - in isolation that tells you absolutely nothing.
Furniture
Yeah, Coventry's got it right. The Civic may not outperform the Lamborghini, but overall it's a better package than the Lambo.
Also, I agree with you guys with the GT3 and the RS version of it. The GT3 is way more liveable with and better looking as well (not to say that the RS is downright ugly). Just saying that the color combinations suck.
Enthusiast
Although I won't name names, I happen to know that car magazines are more than happy suck manufacturer cock when they need to. After all, two of the key requirements for a magazine are test cars and most importantly, advertising. It doesn't take a genius to work out where they both come from.
I'm not by any means saying that's the case here, but it's worth noting that car mags don't like upsetting manufacturers if they can possibly help it.
Fanatic
An Aussie car mag MOTOR has faced quite a bit of criticism in the past for the outcomes of it's Performance Car of the Year and Bang For Your Buck winners in the past, though not to this extent. One year at PCOTY the S15 200SX beat the 996 Turbo and another year the Clio Sport beat the EVO IV for Band for your buck winner, and there were letters coming for months about it.
Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death...
– Hunter Thompson
'64
Shell?
True, but it swings both ways.
If they are into threatening journalists, and trying to blackmail them into getting positive reviews, the journalists have a very good platform to expose that to the general public.
I'd wager that could do more damage than by coming second in a test which still raves about a car.
Magazines should not be put into a position where they are required to capitulate to manufacturers - they can if they want to, but it should be down to the magazine, not the manufacturer. Manufacturers should be showing a bit more professionalism and learn how to work with magazines' opinions to produce the best cars, and therefore the best reviews. Some of them do, but you have to wonder at those that apparently don't.
Furniture
Sometimes Top Gear can cause a big ruckus as well in their findings in cars. Not sure if they sometimes try to help manufacturers or hurt them though.
Enthusiast
HAHA, Subscriptions FTMFW!
V0R5PRU7NG DUR6CH T3CHN1K
Motion & Emotion
Member
I read every edition of EVO to tatters. For my money it's the most well-judged, skillfully executed new car magazine out there. Not having driven any of the cars in there, I'm inclined to take their word for it, because they do their best to explain their decisions, and they don't make their decisions based solely on the 0-60/hot lap/skidpad results.
My favorite thing about EVO, and what I find lacking in ganinso many car magazines, is the attention to the character of a car; the car's geist, if you will (don't blame you a bit if you won't — been proofreading a lot of my wife's philosophy homework lately)
The Renault hot hatches always rate highly because they're scrappy little bastards; maleable to the driver's will and obedient enough to inspire the commitment to give Porsches a good chase.
The Subaru STi doesn't score as highly because they're just not that involving or confidence-inspiring. You can still give a Porsche a chase, but there'll be an ample side dish of terror-sweat and understeer to go with your undercooked slab of point-to-point speed.
They've different characters, and they've appeared together in many an EVO group test, along with dozens of other cars mismatched if you're only looking at the stopwatch.
You could bolt four turbochargers to an Enzo FXX and screw eight Bridgestone F1 tires in at the corners dualley-style to succeed in breaking the production car record at any circuit in the world, but would you really be having more fun than the guy batting around and steering with the throttle in his primer-gray '89 MX-5 with four comfort-spec radials? I think no. I think not.
What makes us all car people is the thrill of a great drive and the sense of accomplishment as we recount the almost-missed downshifts and on-the-edge slingshots out of our favorite corners as we slowly drive home.
You can't enjoy that in a Chevy Cavalier. It takes a special car. That's why EVO (and other good sportscar magazines) doesn't waste paragraphs about how many cubic feet the interior has and how effectively it swallows that goddamn 4'x6' piece of plywood everybody's apparently going to have to haul at some point.
And who gives a rainy day **** if the Dauer 929 or whatever it's called is the fastest production car with a theoretical 278mph top speed and who gives a **** if the new CL600 has a function to automatically save a little blue dot on the satnav whenever the in-dash sensors detect a skillful curbside handjob?
What gives me the biggest thrill? What car can best serve as a violin to my clumsy efforts at being its determined Paganini? (I'm the first Arkansan to reference Paganini public forum, by the way.
I've been saving it up until I could brag about how thoroughly I read EVO.)
( ;-))
I've wrung my STi to its limits. It understeers naturally, but I've deliberately unsettled the car on a steeply descending second-gear haripin with a Scandinavian flick (drift feint, for you poseurs) and come out the other side resolved to never, never, never try that shit again. I've bounced off the speed limiter, about 200 rpm shy of the rev limiter, at an indicated 155 on a stretch of deserted 3 a.m. interstate and found it to be a non-event. I've tried my best Petter Solberg impersonation on one of Arkansas' many twisty mountain gravel roads (a thrill to be enjoyed in extreme moderation) and I've looked out my passenger's-side window into the eyes of a Ponitac Firebird WS-6 driver at a 1,000-foot hillbilly drag strip in the seconds before the green light lit, and I beat him to the finish.
But the most thrilling drive ever was behind the wheel of a 1963 Jeep with an ancient single-barrel carbureted Buick V-6 under the rusted hood. I was trying to roundup my sister's runaway horse on the family cattle ranch.
(Google Maps — Guion Arkansas — at the end of the the unnamed road just east of CR-117 — that's my father's red barn)
That Jeep had about as much in common with a sportscar as I do with Beckham, but on that drive, across those fields and over those hills, working a four-speed transmission with all four synchronizer rings worn out, having to heel-and-toe and double-declutch on all shifts and sawing away at a two-foot diameter wheel, it was like being Stirling Moss and John Wayne simultaneously.
That's the greatest driving thrill of my life so far, and performed with the least likely machine imaginable short of a tractor.
It's not power to weight ratios that make a car. It's not lap times. It's the thrill and the magic of the experience. Some cars provide it more than others. In EVO's 2007 coty, I'm convinced the Porsche provided that.
Jesus what a long post.
I'm erudite ;-)
Enthusiast
Agreed. Hail LanQuail.
www.secondaryperspective.blogspot.com
Furniture
Ditto.
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